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Grade A/B Tournament

Been searching for a discussion related to this but found nothing.

Anyone knows what does Grade A and Grade B tournaments mean?

Are they of lesser importance than the stars competitions (i.e. the 7* WC, 6* China Open, etc)? If they are, then why the IBF sort them out as A and B grade tournaments instead of having the stars from *1 to *9 instead of having A, B, and *1 to *7?

My sentences might be confusing. If it is, just check the first link below and look at the drop down menu in the GRADE option, hopefully will help clarifying what I meant.

As far as I remember everything goes around the money. To reach one * the prize money must be at least USD 30.000. If it is below, than there is A grade, possibly B grade happens when prize money is under cca USD 10 000.

This happened to Polish Open. It used to be one * (USD 30k), but this year PBA didn't collect enough money to retain the status and tournament was A graded.

Re: Grade A/B Tournament

Originally posted by sayakeren If they are, then why the IBF sort them out as A and B grade tournaments instead of having the stars from *1 to *9 instead of having A, B, and *1 to *7?

My wild guess will be, the "*" system will be qualified to count as ranking points, but A / B won't be. Therefore, separated "grade" will be easier to distiguish the difference. If we using 1-9 instead of 1-7 then A/B, ppl will be confused why the 2 lowest grade won't be able to be counted toward international ranking.

To me, A/B grade tournaments are more like noticeable regional tournaments, which are better than local / club lvl tournies, but not as "important" as the "*" ones.

The IBF tournaments' star rating (ie. 4* or 5*) is a direct relation to the prize money available. For example, in the past the China Open was a 5* tourney, but since the prize money was boosted, it will be a 6* this year.

For a full table of ranking points earned at different leveled tournaments, please refer to this page. The ranking points table is a little ways down. Also the page is in .pdf format, so adobe reader is required.

But, if so, why the IBF sets two different classifications, i.e. the "*" and the "A/B" tournaments, instead of having it as *1 to *9 if actually all of them are having common characteristics of different earning points?

Originally posted by bigredlemon So hypotheically, a player could end up being ranked number one by playing an infinite number of tournaments even if s/he was dead-last in every single one?

(finally, my goal is within reach )

Lol...

Wondering whether ppl can get points even in "Qualificatiohn round". To me, it should be. Since even participants in such rounds, especially the winners (wild card holder) should be way better than ranked 1024 in a tourny.

Thx guys for all of ur opinions. I drew some further hypothesis by combining some insights together.

Originally posted by LazyBuddy
To me, A/B grade tournaments are more like noticeable regional tournaments, which are better than local / club lvl tournies, but not as "important" as the "*" ones.

Originally posted by seven
* can't have two GP the same week (you can have one or several A/B opens at the same time as a GP)
* one country can't have more than one GP (BMW Open is an exception to that rule though)

(Intermezzo: Seven, are these your hypothesis or are they true according to facts? Looks very convincing )

It looks like that Seven's first point was right. In this link: (http://195.102.4.163:81/Portal/Deskt....aspx?tabid=18 --> choose Sep 2003 and look at week 36), we can see that two A-graded tournaments (Canada International and NZ Internationa) are commenced in the same week with ONE star-graded tournament (Malaysia Open). It proves that several A/B tournaments can be held in the same week while GPs should be carried out in different weeks. I'd reckon that LB's point also has a point: The A/B tournaments are more of regional lvl since I went to some A/B tournaments' websites and it seemed that the participants are more likely to be regional players, i.e. in Australia International (A-grade) most of the players are from OZ or NZ.

I also agree with ur second point, but with an additional remark that these countries can only have ONE GP that represents the countries themselves, i.e. China Open, Spore Open, Indo Open, etc. But it is still possible for them to host another GPs that are not representing the countries, i.e. WC, TC/UC, AE, etc. I drew this hypothesis from looking at this link: http://195.102.4.163:81/Portal/deskt....aspx?tabid=40 (choose Nation = People's Republic of China); it shows that CHN held China Open 2002 (representing the country) as well as hosted the TC/UC 2002 (not representing the country --> world grand prix). Meanwhile, both China Open and TC/UC are GPs.

Hmm, anyone has any other insight regarding the different characteristics between the star-graded and the A/B-graded?

Wondering whether ppl can get points even in "Qualificatiohn round". To me, it should be. Since even participants in such rounds, especially the winners (wild card holder) should be way better than ranked 1024 in a tourny.

Yes, qualifications should garner some smaller amount of points. But no GP is ever going to host 1024 players, unless the players want to be there for 4 weeks. The most common for MS is 64 players and the other events usually 32.
Why not just cut out qualifications and change the events from 64 to 128 or from 32 to 64 players. That way, many other aspiring players actually get a chance and some ranking points.

Now there is a difference between A grade and A 'class' ... :
the grade indicates the international IBF rating, the class refers to a national way to give a certain status to a tournament
Note that a Satellite tournament, being C grade in Holland is presented locally as A tournament, which is subject to strict regulations and a certain amount of price money. Other A tournaments, which are not organized as part of the Satellite circuit, are not ranked with a grade at all, neither you get points.
B tournaments are not graded, no points.

Wondering whether ppl can get points even in "Qualificatiohn round". To me, it should be. Since even participants in such rounds, especially the winners (wild card holder) should be way better than ranked 1024 in a tourny.

Yes, qualification rounds to seem to count!

If the main draw has 64 entries, a defeat in last qualification round gives points of last 128, and so on...

Originally posted by sayakeren (Intermezzo: Seven, are these your hypothesis or are they true according to facts? Looks very convincing )

I've not found any written rule for the first one (though it seems pretty logical), but here's the exact rule for the second (described here ) :

Criteria For World Ranking Events

Only two tournaments within a country [apart from tournaments held in Oceania] can be included the World Ranking within a 52-week period:

Either one International and one Open tournament, one International and one World Grand Prix tournament, two Open tournaments, or one Open and one World Grand Prix tournament. However, the IBF reserves the right to accept tournaments under specific circumstances.

Oceania are permitted 6 ‘A’ grade tournaments and 2 ‘B’ grade tournaments to be included within a 52-week period.